Well I am finally getting around to adding a new report, and after last weekend's 2 races in Point Roberts, I think finally, Spring has arrived.
We sailed 2 short W-L races. Though we are no threat to the winter series, we did hope to do well after a few tweaks in the off season.
We shook off the rust with nailing the start on race 1 - forcing Danu - the Bene 36.7 to bail out on barging the pin end. Unfortunately we weren't able to hold our lane and let Jabiru - the J 35 to get a above us and take control of the first beat.
Today was all about finding clear air and favourable tide. If you had to choose one over the other, tide won, and we lost out to Danu at the weather mark and he snuck in just ahead. But we set quickly "big red" and jibed sooner and just took off. We quickly passed Danu and were reeling in Jabiru fast. However we were flirting with that tide line and lost out to the symetrical boat as we just couldn't sail low enough and were forced to jibe and it was game set and match!
We got 2nd overline and with being rated slowest of the other contending boats, including an Express 37, we knew we had 2nd for the race locked up.
The second race was a carbon copy of the first ony with an extra lap added.
We again won the start and with the freshening breeze had switched wisely to the #2. The boat was pretty dialed in but we only had 5 on board and struggled in the puffs a bit.
We got the windward mark just behind the leaders and the skip called for a late jibe set. Andy and got things switched quickly and we launched before 2 boats just ahead us and were going in the right direction when we noticed a problem........no one tailed the kite halyard and Sean was in big trouble as the kite filled. Before we knew it, the kite was in the water, filled with shrimp and the boat was not moving anywhere.
The guys did well, though it did take 2 - 3 minutes, to sort things out and we managed to get the kite out and launched again. We looked around and discovered that we were back of the pack but not by too much.
We had a smooth rounding, hit the beach hard on the upwind leg and made up about half the distance on the leaders. We rounded and got big red up one last time for the day, and boy did she pull on this leg. We just flew and as the breeze picked up we were doing 7.8 knots of boat speed in 12 knots of breeze! We passed Danu, and were catching Avalanche now too ( Jabiru was too far gone ).
We managed to squeeze out Avalanche at the bottom mark and the guys did a fabulous job with the douse and we put 30 seconds in the bank too to finish a strong 2nd again.
Great day out on the water, with great crew and excellent competition!
CdM
